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Summer School brings top Cyber Security and IT Law Experts to Estonia

05. july 2016

An international Cyber Security Summer School for doctoral students and young researchers titled “Digital Forensics – Technology and Law” is held in Tallinn from July 3-8, and brings together leading cyber security and IT law practitioners to Estonia from all over the world.

“The Summer School helps to present Estonia’s well-developed system of higher education and research in the field of cyber security”, said the Director of the Information Technology Foundation for Education (HITSA) Erki Urva. “The objective of our second annual Cyber Security Summer School is to facilitate the acquisition and sharing of skills geared towards the creation of an information society in which we can all feel secure in the future.”

This year’s Summer School brings together 50 doctoral candidates and researchers in the fields of law and information technology, who are instructed by an international team of lawyers and computer scientists who are active in the field of IT law. According to the main organisers, Director of the IT Law Programme Helen Eenmaa-Dimitrieva and Professor of Cyber Security Olaf Maennel, the intensive coursework, the discussions and the weeklong technically demanding legal exercise help the participants acquire the skills they need to understand issues related to digital forensics from the perspective of both the law and technology. “In the IT Law Program we actively gear our work towards an end where legal systems and the skills of lawyers support the implementation of new technologies and constructive approaches to the development of the information society. The Cyber Security Summer School, which supports the ability of specialists from the areas of information technology and law to cooperate, is going to make a strong contribution to the development of the information society”, said Helen Eenmaa-Dimitrieva. Topics under discussion include issues such as digital evidence, identification, authentication, security, risk management and many others.

One of the main presenters at the Summer School, a leading international expert in the field of digital forensics, Stephen Mason, focuses his presentations on digital evidence and authentication. “We now live in an age controlled by software code written by human beings. Software code is full of faults, and in some cases we rely on the software code written by programmers that is included in ensure aircraft, motor cars, satellites, cameras, water and electricity meters, in hospitals - and there are many examples of faulty software code killing and injuring people. For this reason, it is important for judges and lawyers to be made fully aware of the issues relating to software code, because the failure to understand this elementary issue has caused failures in dealing properly with such cases,” Mason explained.

Jeffrey Moulton from Louisiana State University, USA, talks about risk management, helping to create a knowledge base for the analysis, evaluation and control of the risks inherent in sensitive information management and processing systems. Moulton discusses how technological developments make us vulnerable, and how to coexist with the internet of things, where even our personal equipment can spy on us.

This weeklong, intensive cooperative educational project is made possible through the collaboration of the Estonian Information Technology Foundation for Education, the University of Tartu IT Law Programme, the Tallinn University of Technology, and the University of Adelaide, Australia. The project is supported by the Estonian Ministry of Education and Research.

The Cyber Security Summer School is held at the Estonian Information Technology College from July 3-8. The formal closing event will take place on 7 July, at 7 p.m. in the Tallinn Teachers’ House, where the participants will also be greeted by the Head of the National Cyber Security Policy Coordination Section of the Latvian Ministry of Defence, Ieva Ilves.